Respecting the Constitution

This is a reprint from my old blog, first posted 6 years ago.

In the 19th Century, the Temperance Movement gained considerable steam and worked its way through America.  The goal was to end the evils of drunkenness by banning alcohol.  After more than a century of effort, the various Temperance groups achieved great successes in towns, cities, counties, and even states but there was still work to be done.  It was time to go national.  However, there was a problem.  The Constitution offered no authority for the Federal government to outlaw or restrict alcohol; that was a state-issue.

The Temperance folks were not to be denied.  There was a way around that pesky problem and it was provided by Article V of the Constitution.  They could amend the Constitution.  The 18th Amendment was proposed in the summer of 1917 and ratified less than 2 years later.  Starting in 1919, the US government had the authority to restrict alcohol and Prohibition commenced.  Though alcohol consumption in the US was dramatically reduced (by roughly two-thirds if I recall correctly), the resulting crime of bootleggers – especially violence like the St. Valentine’s Day massacre – was viewed as an unacceptable price.  Thus, the 21st Amendment was ratified and the alcohol flowed again in 1933.

You might ask, "What's your point, Dave?"  The point is that in order for the Federal government to outlaw a substance - alcohol - it was necessary to amend the Constitution.  This all happened in the days prior to rampant judicial activism so the Constitution wasn't a "Living Document" yet.  So, my question is this: on what basis does the Federal government outlaw any other substance?  I find no amendments granting the Federal government the authority to ban marijuana, cocaine, or anything else.  Where did they get this new found power that required an amendment for alcohol?

The purpose of the Constitution was to limit the authority of the Federal government.  The Founders had experience with an overbearing monarch and didn't want a repeat performance.  They wrote the Constitution to give the Federal government a limited role, mostly with regard to foreign policy and interaction among the states.  In our era, we have forgotten this.  Government has stuck its fingers in pies where it has no Constitutional authority to do so.  However, since most people are ignorant of the Constitution, there are few who seek to hold government to account.

From my reading of the Constitution, I can find no authority for Social Security, Medicare, Education, Drugs, Media (e.g. NPR, PBS), et al.  Whenever I make this point, it is inevitable that the ‘General Welfare’ clause is cited as a catchall.  Well, let's see what James Madison, Father of the Constitution, thought of General Welfare: 

With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.

It appears that James Madison is on my side of this argument.  The Temperance Movement respected the Constitution and made the effort to amend the document.  Now, we no longer respect the document and just amend it on the fly through judicial rulings.  It is clear that we have drifted from the belief that the Constitution was meant to limit government.  Today, the government does many things that the Framers never intended and the document doesn't condone except when read by activist judges and elected officials who neglect their oath to uphold the Constitution.